May 2011

Archives

With Congress 2011 officially launching tomorrow at the University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University in Fredericton, we're giving you a sneak preview of the Equity Issues content that will be going on throughout the week.

Under the theme "Transforming the Academy: Indigenous Education," the Federation's Equity Issues Portfolio, under the leadership of VP Equity Issues Malinda Smith, has pulled together a stellar line up of speakers and panels.

A Big Thinking lecture on May 30 with Chief Shawn Atleo starts off the programming...

If you're sitting around waiting for the end of days this weekend, you might like to have a listen the Big Thinking podcast. We have interviewed Lorenzo DiTommaso from Concordia University to get his take on Apocalypism. Basically, Lorenzo looks at all the ways that the world might end and what that means for our culture. Have a listen!

History teaches us that many progressive initiatives, if not nurtured carefully, risk growing to reflect the very ideologies against which they were formed. This is a risk faced by multicultural education. So certainly we need to organize ourselves against attempts to discredit the value of multicultural education by those who are most invested in maintaining the status quo. To dismiss multicultural education is, after...

Some of our community's best and brightest were recognized today by Trudeau Foundation. Fourteen scholars in the humanities and social sciences will receive a total of $2.5 M in research funding. Tackling issues from social media to religious tolerance, these scholars will have a generous new set of resources available to them to help them complete their important work. In the press release from the Foundation, P.G Forest said "The Trudeau Foundation rewards excellence and provides young researchers with the best conditions to ground their work in the real world." We can't agree more with the importance of this type of funding and thank the Trudeau Foundation for their continued support for our community.

This blog post is part of the Federation Equity Issues Portfolio’s ‘Transforming the Academy: Indigenous Education’ series, which will be the focus of the Portfolio’s programming at Congress 2011.

In current and past teaching for well over a decade now I have been engaging with people – in the majority of cases, non-Indigenous peoples – in the shared challenge of thinking about the histories of racism and settler colonialism. One of the recurrent obstacles in doing this work involves the discomfort that ensues in...

This blog post is part of the Federation Equity Issues Portfolio’s ‘Transforming the Academy: Indigenous Education’ series, which will be the focus of the Portfolio’s programming at Congress 2011.

First Nation communities and individuals can resolve their own issues by focusing on community development, and by strengthening processes of decolonization, self-determination and citizenship. Yet a review of the historical and contemporary record...

Is a Bachelor of Arts degree enough? And how might it need to change? The Globe and Mail investigates in today's paper, exploring why students are feeling more pressure to continue their studies after completing a BA. The rise in graduate and professional degree enrollment is symptomatic of a wider realization: that employers are putting greater emphasis on additional credentials. The article also goes into depth around ensuring student readiness for university education, especially in the face of growing class sizes.

This blog post is part of the Federation Equity Issues Portfolio’s ‘Transforming the Academy: Indigenous Education’ series, which will be the focus of the Portfolio’s programming at Congress 2011.

What is the meaning of reconciliation? In this short contribution to the conversations unfolding in Canada, as elsewhere, I will focus on just two ways the term is used in contemporary Aboriginal politics and relations in Canada. Both uses of reconciliation are significant for Aboriginal aspirations for self-...